


Like Falling

by kayura_sanada



Category: Kyou Kara Maou!
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Ruminations, Shounen-ai, Yuuri Is A Flower Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 15:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11015814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: Some things were inevitable.





	Like Falling

 

Sometimes, when he crossed over to Shin Makoku, time passed in the hours of a breath, as if the world itself paused to let his mind resettle into its altered role. No longer son and student, but king and, by come strange degree, convert. Instead of thinking over what his mother might be cooking or worrying about his brother’s training with Bob, but instead the mountains of paperwork and teaching awaiting him and, best of all, the faces he would see.

 

The people in his life, his mother had always told him, were the rare blossoms in one’s yard that were never planned or planted. The flowers that bloomed in his life now were ones he never would have thought to find, and so previous he sometimes found himself needlessly giddy over their existence. Each man brought something he hadn’t known he was missing, pillars shoring him up whenever he lost his way. If he had to name each a flower, he thought it would be pretty simple to do so.

 

Gunter, for instance, was a camellia. There were few more refined than he, nor as… invested in the ideas of destiny and divinity. The man was beautiful like a camellia, too, his long silver hair silky as it fell around his face, his delicate features put into prominence by the strands. Gunter was his map. The man knew everything about the new world Yuuri found himself in, and was ready at a moment’s notice to assist in any way he could.

 

Gwendel was a cactus. Not because he seemed all prickly on the outside, though that was certainly a thing, but because he was warm and generous and kind on the inside, and only protected all that with an outer layer of needles. Not to mention how much he endured at the hands of Anissina. He was Yuuri’s tent and blanket, his shelter from the struggles and work of becoming king.

 

Unlike his brothers, Wolfram was a flame. Not just in that he was Yuuri’s torch, lighting his way, burning away everything in his path – even Yuuri himself – but because the man was nothing but emotions. The bleeding heart flower, the wearing of emotions on his sleeve… and perhaps the reason why Yuuri did nothing about Wolfram’s increasingly zealous overtures. Yuuri knew well the story of the poor, spurned prince. The only difference was that Wolfram would be more likely to shove his sword into Yuuri than into his own stomach.

 

And then there was Conrad. While Gunter had always seemed like the mother type, Conrad had never fallen into the father category, even with his calm nurturing and stalwart protection. Even with him being Yuuri’s godfather. There was always something more there, from the moment Conrad rode in on his horse to save Yuuri that first day of his arrival in Shin Makoku. More than a security blanket or a map or a torch, Conrad was his compass. Without Conrad by his side, Yuuri felt as if the world might quake beneath him. When he’d lost Conrad, he’d found himself drifting. When he’d learned of the man’s existence, he’d found himself following. Conrad was his Sweet William flower. Conrad was the man Yuuri had first learned to depend on, the man he never doubted. Someone whose presence had simply slotted into place. Someone Yuuri missed terribly every time he went back to his world. He missed baseball practice with Conrad. He missed their talks.

 

His mother, he thought as he felt the shift come over him, as he found his eyes adjusting to a view other than water and blackness, had been the one to instill within him a deep love of nature and flowers. She had been the one to teach him how to grow them and how to use their language to explain how he felt. She was the one who, when he liked a girl back in grade school, had taught him that yellow tulips meant that he liked her, but knew she didn’t like him back. She taught him that to ask to remain friends would mean adding pink tulips, and to leave all red tulips behind. (Tulips had been the girl’s – Himiko’s – favorite flower.)

 

Thanks to his mom, it was normal to see the world’s abundance in terms of meanings and emotions. It was one of the reasons why he still felt so lost in Shin Makoku sometimes. He didn’t know the meanings of the flowers here. He didn’t know much of anything. Who knew knives and forks could be so dangerous?

 

He looked up, only to find a sky covered into blackness by rain. The world tilted slightly, until he realized he wasn’t leaning or lying down against anything. He’d formed, not from a puddle on the ground, but from a raindrop in the air.

 

This world always left him off-kilter.

 

The moment he’d begun seeing Conrad as a Sweet Williams flower, he’d known he was in trouble. His mother had always said that there was something in him, some strong, unbending will to love, and to keep giving love, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. He’d thought nothing of having Conrad by his side, because the love he’d had for the man had felt the simplest of all. He’d never heard of love – the romantic kind – as any such thing. Most television and movies talked about it like it was some heart-stopping, world-shattering event. Maybe that was something else he needed to learn about Shin Makoku, other than its foreign landscapes and meadows of bright, meaningless colors. Maybe it simply was, like the demon blood in his veins or the crown awaiting him in the castle.

 

Sweet Williams flower: a masculine flower expressing gallantry, finesse; perfection. Fidelity. Love.

 

He fell from the sky, his arms flailing wildly as if somehow that might stop his fall. He heard a shout – a so, so familiar shout – and suddenly arms wrapped around him, hugged his soaked body tight to a large, warm chest, and held him tight. He shivered, let himself curl into that body, smell the scents of leather and horse that clung to the familiar fabric around him, before leaning away and grinning brightly. Conrad gave him a gentle smile in return.

 

Some things, he thought, were inevitable. Like falling.


End file.
